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UK 3PL and Warehousing Statistics 2026

First published June 2026. Around 30 sourced facts on the size, shape and squeeze points of UK third-party logistics. Every figure is attributed and every source is linked at the bottom. Lift any of them, a citation back is all we ask.

Every parcel that lands on a doorstep started its day in a warehouse, and more and more of those warehouses belong to someone other than the brand whose name is on the box. That is third-party logistics, the quiet machine behind UK retail, and it runs to tens of billions of pounds a year.

We run a 3PL and courier operation, so these are the numbers we actually live with: warehouse rents, vacancy rates, automation budgets, the driver shortage. We have gathered the figures we get asked about most into one place. Each one is sourced and linked at the end.

One note on the data. The warehouse-property figures from Savills and CBRE, and the retail share from the ONS, are measured and reliable. The market-size and automation forecasts come from research houses and vary between sources, so treat those as the shape of a trend rather than a number to bank to the decimal.

The size of UK 3PL

  • ~£22bn is the size of the UK third-party logistics market. (IBISWorld)
  • $29.1bn was the UK 3PL market in 2025 on a broader basis including transport, forecast to reach $30.2bn in 2026. (Mordor Intelligence)
  • $36.3bn is the forecast for the UK 3PL market by 2031, a compound growth rate of around 3.7%. (Mordor Intelligence)
  • ~7% a year is the growth rate for value-added warehousing and distribution, the fastest-moving 3PL segment, driven by ecommerce. (Mordor Intelligence)
  • ~41% of UK 3PL activity sits in domestic transport management. (Mordor Intelligence)
  • $1.33bn was the UK ecommerce warehouse market in 2025, forecast to reach $1.68bn by 2030. (Mordor Intelligence)

What is driving the growth

  • 28.2% of all UK retail spending is now online, and climbing, which is the demand engine under the whole sector. (ONS)
  • Asset-light is the direction of travel: brands increasingly outsource storage and picking rather than signing their own warehouse leases. (industry)
  • ~53% of total shipping cost now sits in the last mile, up from around 41% in 2018, pushing brands toward specialists. (industry)
  • ~£1.2bn is the projected size of the UK same-day delivery segment as demand for speed grows. (market research)
  • ~1 in 5 ecommerce orders is returned, turning reverse logistics into a 3PL growth area in its own right. (Retail Economics)

This is the case for outsourcing in one line: the demand is rising and the work is getting more specialised. It is why 3PL services and storage and fulfilment keep pulling work in from brands that used to run it themselves.

Warehouse space and property

  • 25.6m sq ft of UK warehouse space was taken up in 2025, 22% more than in 2024. (CBRE)
  • 4.3m sq ft was let in Q4 2025 alone. (CBRE)
  • 7.1% was the UK warehouse vacancy rate in Q4 2025, the highest level since 2011. (Savills / CBRE)
  • 1.9% was the all-time low vacancy rate back in 2022, which shows how fast this cycle swings. (Savills)
  • ~56% of currently vacant space is good-quality Grade A stock, so modern, well-located units stay tight even as headline vacancy rises. (Savills)
  • 12.6m sq ft of new warehouse space was under construction heading into 2026. (Savills)
  • East Midlands recorded the highest take-up across 2025; the West Midlands led in Q4. (CBRE)

Automation and technology

  • £2.7bn is the forecast size of the UK warehouse automation market by 2030, growing at roughly 19.5% a year from 2025. (OPEX)
  • 45% of UK fulfilment centres had AI-powered automation in 2023; that passes half by 2025 and is forecast to hit 70% by 2027. (Impact Express)
  • 85%+ of UK fulfilment warehouses are expected to be automated to some degree by 2030. (Impact Express)
  • 4.25 to 7.5 is the expected rise in robots per fulfilment warehouse between 2025 and 2030. (Impact Express)
  • 55% of businesses increased their supply-chain investment, prioritising AI and automation. (industry survey)

The labour squeeze

  • ~50,000 is the shortfall in UK HGV drivers, with supply at roughly 320,000 against demand of 370,000. (Mordor Intelligence)
  • Top brake: labour shortages are named as one of the main limits on how fast the UK 3PL sector can expand. (Mordor Intelligence)
  • Peak staffing remains the hardest part of the year to resource, as festive volumes push parcel numbers toward 1.29 billion over Oct to Dec. (Logistics Manager / IMRG)

Sustainability and compliance

  • Decarbonisation mandates are now a structural cost and driver for 3PLs, not a nice-to-have. (Mordor Intelligence)
  • 180-220g of CO2e is the typical footprint of a single delivered parcel, putting warehousing and transport under scrutiny. (EC Group / Royal Mail)
  • Largest ever UK order of electric HGVs was placed in 2025, with more than 20 million products set to move by electric rail. (Amazon)
  • 81% of consumers prefer eco-friendly packaging, and that pressure flows back up the chain to the 3PL. (industry survey)

What the numbers add up to

Read together, the figures describe a sector that is growing steadily, getting more specialised, and bumping up against two hard limits: space and people.

Outsourcing is the structural story

The fastest-growing slice of UK 3PL is not basic haulage, it is value-added warehousing and distribution, growing at around 7% a year. That is brands handing over the complicated parts, fulfilment, kitting, returns, co-packing, because online retail keeps climbing past 28% of all spending and the work is harder to do well in-house than it looks. The asset-light shift is not a fashion. It is brands deciding that warehouses and vans are not where they want their capital.

Space is the real constraint, not demand

Take-up rose 22% in 2025, yet vacancy climbed to 7.1%, the highest since 2011. That looks contradictory until you split the market. The vacant space is largely older, secondhand stock, while modern, well-located Grade A units stay scarce, which is why over half of what is empty is still Grade A and the rest gets snapped up. The swing from a 1.9% vacancy rate in 2022 to 7.1% now tells you how violently this cycle moves. The constraint is not whether there is space, it is whether there is the right space in the right place.

Automation is no longer optional

Put the driver shortage of 50,000 next to the forecast that 85% of fulfilment warehouses will be automated by 2030, and the logic is obvious. The labour is not coming back in the numbers the sector needs, so the work has to get more productive per person. The 3PLs investing in automation now, picking, sorting, inventory, will win on both cost and reliability, and the ones that do not will quietly lose contracts on price they cannot match.

The moat is value-added, not storage

Storing boxes is a commodity, and commodities compete on price until nobody makes money. The defensible work is the value-added layer: accurate picking, fast returns processing, kitting and contract distribution built around a brand's actual orders. With returns running at one in five, reverse logistics alone is becoming a service worth paying for. That is where a good 3PL earns its keep, and where the relationship gets sticky.

What it means if you are choosing a 3PL

  • Ask what share of their space is modern Grade A, because that is what stays available when the market tightens.
  • Look at their automation roadmap, not just their current kit. The labour squeeze is structural.
  • Judge them on returns and value-added work, not just storage rates. That is where service quality actually shows.
  • Check how they staff peak, since that is the hardest few weeks of the year to resource.
  • Treat decarbonisation as a real selection criterion now, not a future one.

The market grows a few percent a year, but the gap between a good 3PL and an average one is widening fast. Pick on capability and the right space, not on the headline storage rate.

Sources

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